


Phoenix Nest

by shadesofbrixton



Series: Theme and Variations: The AU Collection [1]
Category: A Knight's Tale (2001)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-06-02
Updated: 2005-06-02
Packaged: 2019-10-09 11:37:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17406215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadesofbrixton/pseuds/shadesofbrixton
Summary: After the tournament, Geoff and Wat learn to live together. Mostly.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the cozy world of [havenstar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/carinacove/pseuds/carinacove)'s fic, Love Is Such An Old Fashioned Word. This is the theme - an establishment we used to then warp into a dozen AUs.

  
“She’s going to need a name,” Geoff says, and immediately knows that Wat hasn’t been paying attention when the man’s answer is, “who?”  
  
“The tavern,” Geoff answers, tucking his other hand behind his head. It doesn’t prop him up far enough to see Wat, but he knows he’s there. They’ve been lying there all night, spread out on Chaucer’s coat – not that they both fit on it, but it’s warm now and he feels like it needs  _some_  use – and he’s starting to realize that he might not be able to make it onto the bed before he falls asleep. It’s too peaceful here, under the stars, each of them on their backs with legs in opposite directions. They’re pointing away from one another, but they overlap – Geoff thinks there’s something in that, maybe, definitely. He reaches out fingers to brush over the tips of Wat’s hair with his hand (he can barely reach) and grins at the sky as he clarifies. “She’s going to need a name.”  
  
Wat makes a displeased noise, which isn’t terribly uncommon, but he shifts into Geoff’s touch. Which isn’t terribly uncommon either, Geoff is pleased to note, and he relinquishes the dust-dry hair for the coarse material of Wat’s shirt, comforting and rough under his fingertips. “Don’t see why,” Wat is complaining. “It’s the only one for miles around. Isn’t as if there’ll be confusion.”  
  
Geoff knows that Wat will be able to hear his smile, but swats at the man’s arm anyway. “So you’ll just call it ‘The Tavern,’ I imagine, and bother with neither signs nor proper furniture for your clientele.”  
  
“Of course there’ll be chairs and the like. And a fire, and tables, and food.” Wat sounds offended at the insinuation that he, of all people, would improperly run an establishment that had food involved.  
  
“Oh, tables,” Geoff says. “Generous.”  
  
The displeased noise is back, and Geoff thinks that Wat might be shifting up on his elbows, but isn’t sure until the stars are blocked out by a looming shadow of red hair and pale skin. Wat has his jaw clenched in his studious way, eyes challenging. “And just what’s wrong with ‘The Tavern’, anyhow?”  
  
Geoff sighs, and lets his fingers trail up from where they’d been dislodged at Wat’s sudden movement – from thin wrist to the soft spot behind his ear, softening the glass in Wat’s eyes just enough. “It lacks,” he informs the new tavern owner with a cheeky grin, “poetry.”  
  
Disgusted that he hasn’t anticipated the answer, Wat flops onto his back again, upsetting a small bit of dirt and a great bit of Geoff’s leg, where the rear of the man’s thick skull has nestled itself.   
  
Ignoring him – or, well, ignoring Wat as much as Wat can ever be ignored, and he starts plucking at the knee of Chaucer’s trousers just to prove the point – Geoff starts to run over possible names in his head, muttering to himself. “Thatcher’s…no. A Knight’s… doesn’t…” He sighs, frowns. It’s been a long day – getting the framework up on the tavern was a hard stretch of delegation on his behalf, crouching on crossbeams and support studs, testing evenness by walking their length leagues above the ground and making Wat and Kate yell at him to get down before he breaks his neck. It’s hard work, supervising, and they still didn’t manage to get the roof on before night fell. But it’s been warm, and the stars are sharp in the sky, and so he doesn’t mind.  
  
Wat doesn’t mind either, but that could also be because he’s preoccupied with the smooth patch on the knee of Geoff’s pants, rubbing it over and over again with his thumb. Geoff has to suppress the urge to reach down and grab his hand to get him to stop, or maybe just to lace their fingers together. Instead, he looks back up at the sky, and contemplates. The stars are full of more than Will’s realigned fate – old Gods, dead and dust, and fresh ones as well. Heroes and wild beasts, and tamer animals. And mystical creatures. Wat thumps him in the shin with the curl of his knuckles. “If you don’t come up with something, we’re going with mine.”  
  
“Wat,” Geoff says quietly, and the name is almost lost in the dark. “My fiery phoenix.” He isn’t talking to Wat, not really. “Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust, and perhaps you will find your patience in your immolation.” Geoff doubts it.  
  
Wat pokes him in the kneecap. “That’s Will’s bird, not mine.”  
  
Geoff, distracted, brushes his hand over the canvas of Wat’s shirt again, dismissing the idea. “No, I know, it’s – ” He stops. “Perfect. Yes.”   
  
“What’s – ”  
  
Geoff is the one who sits up this time, propping himself up on the heel of his palm and smiling crookedly down at Wat. In a decisive voice, he delivers, “The Phoenix Nest.”   
  
Wat seems to take a moment to roll this over, before raising his eyebrows. “For all of us.”  
  
“For all of us,” Geoff confirms, and this time his fingers do find Wat’s, but only briefly. “Will might have been the Knight, but we were all the Phoenix.” He pauses, his smile goes rakish, his voice teasing. “Maybe not  _me._ ” And it’s the first time he’s twisted the words, and Wat’s surprised laugh is enough to set him at ease again, relaxing into the softness of his coat.  
  
“The Phoneix Nest,” Wat says to the stars, and Geoff wiggles his foot against the other man’s head. “It’ll do.”  
  
Geoff stiles the urge to roll his eyes and smarm off, and turns his gaze to the night sky again. In a few days, he’ll travel again – a writer must, he tells Wat, who fights him tooth and nail over it. He’d assumed that Wat would find distraction in opening the pub, and that he would be able to slip away, but it seems more and more that he’s delightfully surprising in his insistence of locality. But still, Geoff will travel, roam, bring home new stories for the nights by the fire when they are not knights or farriers or tailors or anything but friends (and more, he thinks, with another nudge to Wat’s head – the other man mrrls sleepily at him but does not retaliate). He will travel, but it is here that he will always come, here that will be his home.  
  
And with the night above and Wat at his side, filled with warmth and comfort and belonging, it is easy for Geoff to know that William isn’t the only one who has changed his stars.

 

 

*

 

 

Chaucer has been gone for thirteen days the first time Wat receives a letter. He has never received mail before, and so he saves it until after everyone has gone - the fire burns low in the hearth and ash has blown up under the benches from the shifting wind that chases down the chimney and into the small room. During the night, no one notices the soot greasing slick and dark underfoot, but Wat knows, and covers the floor on sawdust to cut the slip. It is only after the floors have been tended to in this fashion that Wat allows himself to open the creased and weathered parchment that has lived in his pocket all day, and settle in next to the dying light.  
  
Although Wat has never received a letter before, he knows what holding one means. He knows what the letter must have gone through to reach him. He knows that Geoffrey would have had to find someone he trusted enough - who he could charm for long enough - and send the letter on that way. And whoever carried the letter as far as they would, then pass it on again. And so on, and so on, until the letter comes to Wat's hands by, of all people, Germaine. The herald is carefully bedded in a room upstairs by the time Wat finds the tavern empty enough to clear out.  
  
Wat knows by the date on the letter that Chaucer wrote him almost as soon as he left, and that the letter has passed through many hands before it has landed in his own. He tries not to think about who else has read it, who else has seen Geoff's private words to him. Of course, this is Geoff, and Wat has quickly learned (as quickly as Wat can learn anything) that the man would have put nothing truly private in the words he holds in his hands. Wat has learned that even a man who craves the public as much as Geoffrey does still has words that are only for him. Words that, though they may find the same order in Chaucer's public works, lack the meaning of those same words that Geoff recites to him with all of his annoying flourishes and body language.   
  
Wat has learned not to be surprised by the arrival of such a letter - Chaucer has been leaving for longer and longer periods of time, and with his continued English lessons, Wat has long expected something of this nature would find its way to him. He has learned, after months of distraction, of leaning over Geoff's shoulder, of asking too many questions, what Geoffrey's handwriting looks like. He knows it as intimately as he knows his writer's face, as well as he knows everything's locations in his own tavern.   
  
What Wat doesn't know is why Chaucer would send him a letter the majority of which he cannot understand. He can see his own name, and other important words, words that Geoff has insisted upon his memorizing in the time Wat has decided to turn his attentions to the written word. The paper is smooth between his hands, but ripped around the edges - a rich stock that Wat has seen him use for the nobles. He wonders whether to be worried that he is being written to on discarded paper scraps, or pleased that Geoff would think of him at all. In the firelight, the soak of the ink reminds Wat of summer days spent on the road, the comfortable scratch of quill as he tries to sleep, the exotic smell of the ink that comes in the colours of the sky and the grass and the fire itself. The very presence of the letter comforts him in a way he hasn't known, until that very moment, needs comforting.   
  
"You're meant to read it, of course. Not just rub your hands all over the page."   
  
Wat is already up and out of the seat by the fire and toward the door before he realizes who it is, and even after that, he doesn't bother altering his course toward the door. Even his intent isn't changed a terrible lot. Chaucer is smiling at him in that infuriating way, that way that makes Wat want to reach up and fist his fingers in the downey-fine hair at the back of Geoff's skull. So he does, and it doesn't do much to eliminate the smirk, but it does get him in the door and closer to the fire. Geoff tastes of smoke and autumn and shoe leather, and feels so familiar that it makes something in Wat want to simultaneously hit him and drag him down on to the floor behind the bar.   
  
Instead, Geoffrey nudges him away and picks up the letter, almost admiringly. As if he hadn't written the words himself. But Geoffrey is pulling him down onto the bench next to him, smoothing the letter into Wat's hands.  
  
"What does it say?" Wat asks, almost cautiously - Chaucer could easily mock him for this, and he is steeled to deal with the inevitable annoyance of having to hit Geoff in the head a few times before he'll get his answer.  
  
Instead, though, Geoff just runs a loving thumb over the corner of the page. "You'll be able to read it yourself soon enough." He pauses, cocks his head, runs a finger under Wat's name. "I wasn't sure it would find you at all." The last he says almost to himself, contemplatively.  
  
Wat frowns to himself, and the nudges up against Chaucer's shoulder. "Tell me anyway."   
  
Chaucer sighs in a very put-upon way. "It says 'I love you,' you should be able to read that by now." But the letter  _doesn't_  say that - it doesn't and Wat knows because he  _does_  know how to read those words, and would have known. But the way Chaucer tells him, the feel of the paper in his hands and the other man against his back, tells him that, although he has not misread, yes, that  _is_  what the letter says.   
  
So Wat nods, and sets the letter to the side, and tilts his head to scrutinize Geoff. Who, it appears, is already doing the same to him. As if he has another letter coming swiftly together in his head. Before he can reach for pen and ink (and Wat knows that he will if he's given the chance), Wat asks him, "When are you leaving again?"  
  
A smile teases at Geof's mouth. "So eager to see me gone again?" Wat's expression is all he needs to know the answer is insufficient, and he moves nearer to the fire, sighing as his knees work out their kinks and pops. "I thought I might stay the winter here. If you think you can find the room for a permanent lodger."   
  
They have discussed Geoff staying permanently at the Phoenix Nest, so Wat knows not to be too surprised. But he finds the idea of a winter next to Geoff a shockingly pleasing idea. "I hadn't thought to have you stay so soon," he confesses.   
  
Chaucer makes a tsking sound and retrieves one of his long arms from behind him to trace a thumb - the same thumb that traced the edge of the letter - down Wat's jaw. "The winter comes faster when I am not at your side. Even in the depths of the hottest summer, I would find it most barren and foreboding without you. So I hope you'll allow my early return."  
  
The hand falls away before Wat can respond, but he clutches at it fiercely. "That," he says, leaning in so that Geoff cannot avoid his question with more flowery words, "is what the letter says?"  
  
A cold swirl of autumn chases down the chimney and sends the flames guttering before they can right themselves. "That is what the letter says," Geoff allows, and then adds, "in part."   
  
"And the rest?" Wat asks, suspicious of the explosion of mischief that has crept onto Chaucer's face.  
  
"The rest," Chaucer informs him, "you shall learn over the winter."   
  
And Wat lets it go, because if there is anything he trusts about Geoff, it is that the other man is an excellent teacher. 

 

 

*

 

 

Chaucer knows he’s made the right choice when, a week after returning to William’s Hamlet, Wat already wants him to leave again.  
  
“Underfoot,” Wat growls at him, shoving him hard with a shoulder where others would have swished at him with a rag. But Chaucer is taking up space at the bar, and his parchment is already spattered with suspect liquids, and the writer doesn’t seem to be minding at all.   
  
“All part and parcel of the occupation,” Chaucer tries to explain to him when he loses an entire page to some mysterious drench that has worked its way across the pock-marked wood. But Wat won’t have it, and tries to send him over to the hearth.  
  
The hearth, however, is no better, not with the increasing autumn winds, and the surprising drench of rain that followed Chaucer home and seems to have decided to stay. Perched with a tablet on his knee and a feather rasping over and over and over against his cheek, the patrons are more than happy to accommodate the man. He tells stories as often as he keeps to himself, muttering strange, lengthy, confusing phrases. But when the ashes flutter down onto the hearth and the wind shunts them up in a flash of sparks and scatter small burns into Chaucer’s paper, Wat makes him move again.  
  
From the hearth, there is little place left to go. So Geoffrey spends a few days trekking back and forth from the forge to the tailor’s and, on one occasion, up to the castle at Lady Jocelyn’s request – Wat does not bother himself with the details, but there seems to have been some demand for a Christening poem.   
  
But when he returns, and attempts to write once more, Wat is there again to shoo him away from the tavern’s tables, slicked with grease and candle wax that eat shiny patches through the pages of his work.   
  
There are simply no other options, and Geoff points this out to the other man with a tip of the quill and a wry smile. If it were warmer, they could set tables up outside – it’s already been discussed; barrels that could be rolled out beside the doors and then in again at night. Free advertising, Chaucer had called it, and had nodded approvingly. But for now, it was far too cold to force the writer out of doors for his trade.   
  
“You have to understand,” Geoff says with not a hint of impatience in his voice – Wat is already in the rudimentary stages of anger, but Geoff thinks it’s a good look for him, and so doesn’t do a terrible lot to assuage the situation. “That what I do, I can do anywhere. Under any circumstances. As long as there are people around.”   
  
“Do it later,” Wat demands. “Write when no one else is around, then. I’m people. That’s good enough.”  
  
“No,” Geoff says lightly, “you aren’t.”   
  
So Wat hits him in the back of the head with a mug.  
  
After the expletives that Geoff strings together have left the room in an explosion of raucous laughter, the writer gives him a significant look. “And why is it, precisely, that you’ve worked yourself into such a tizzy over the state of my writing?”  
  
This brings Wat up short. He stares at Geoff for just a moment, blinking in agitation, and Geoff grins at him and raises his eyebrows to punctuate the question. The room watches them, but doesn’t really listen very closely.  
  
So Wat swings at him with the mug again. Geoff ducks this time, and catches Wat’s hand on the backswing and manages to unclamp his fingers from around the weapon. He sets it consolingly on the surface between them, and narrows one eye at Wat’s frowning face. “This is about my writing, then?”  
  
“Of course it is,” Wat snaps at him. “What did you think, I wanted you out?”  
  
“Hmm,” Geoff says, a broad smile on his face. Even if Wat had, he wouldn’t have gone. But there’s something endearing in Wat being concerned over his writing, and Geoff has to pretend to study his ink-flecked hands to distract from his desire to reach over and ruffle Wat’s incorrigible hair.   
  
But the ambiguous noise doesn’t do much for Wat’s temper, and the man is scowling again.   
  


* * *

  
  
Wat eventually loses his cool over something so innocent as Geoffrey maybe not really, okay probably on purpose, scratching words into the surface of the bar. It’s cheap wood – he’ll replace it when he can afford to, Wat keeps saying – and it’s soft and Geoffrey likes the look of the way the words looked carved in with his steel quill nibs. One night when Wat is still ill with what he’ll never admit is food poisoning, Geoff graciously offers to clean the room for the evening, and Wat disappears to be sick all over himself.  
  
When he comes down the next morning, Geoff is asleep, collapsed over the bar, and every single square centimeter of wood has been covered. In Chaucer’s tidy, scrawling carvings. He has ruined three quills in the process and, even though Geoff knows Kate will bend her delicate touch to them, Wat is angered at the waste. Geoff considers it a worthy sacrifice.  
  
Wat wants to have it read to him, so he wakes Geoff by pulling the stool out from under him.  
  


* * *

  
  
After the incident at the bar, Geoff is banished from the tavern if he plans on writing.  
  
“A writer can’t  _plan_  these things,” he attempts to defend himself to Wat’s sloping scowl; to his loosely crossed arms. “I have to write when I’m inspired, and where better to be inspired than in such a hotbed of activity?” He makes a sweeping gesture at the empty tavern and the fire pops.  
  
“You can bloody well leave your ‘inspiration’ for somebody else’s tavern,” Wat declares, and points at the door.  
  
Geoff catches him ‘round the middle, pulling them flush together, and says, “But darling, you know there’s no one but you,” in the mocking way he tends to use when dealing with such proclamations.   
  
Geoff is still laughing when Wat boxes him in the ear, and then they fall to, grappling until Geoff agrees to write from their rooms.  
  


* * *

  
  
He enjoys the room over the tavern – it’s simple, but the windows are solid, and heavy, and the roof is well put together. There is a large, out-hinged window that opens to the south, just over the Phoenix Nest’s sign, and it is large enough for Geoff to sprawl in to watch the sun rise as he sets. He balances his scrolls on a piece of carefully sanded wood and the ink lives at a precarious perch near his hip.   
  
It is there, in the loft beams of the Phoenix Nest, that Geoff finally beings to set their story to page. He writes about the pilgrims, and the sailors, and the clerks. He writes about the judge and the cook and the miller and the nuns, and he makes very careful point to detail Simon the Summoner and Peter the Pardoner. Frequently. In excruciating exactness. But he begins with William’s tale, because William was last.  
  
Every good author knows the weight of what comes last.  
  
The sun arcs past him, warm in the winterish chill, and when he gets restless with trying to think of just the right word, he calls greetings down to the people on the street. Most in the hamlet have become accustomed to the writer, and do not seem to find it odd that he should be defying gravity, as well.  
  
The days drag past and Geoff begins to think of the window as his. Christiana comes, on days that her fingers will no longer cooperate and Roland is pressed to finish, and Geoff drills her in the politest ways he knows for details of the court. Christiana is only too delighted to impart the secrets.  
  
Geoffrey manages a week – a week in which Wat tumbles to bed with him still cramped at the candle, scribbling furiously, a week in which the dull sounds of the tavern are muffled underfoot – a week in which he can write seamlessly.   
  
And then one night Wat ascends the staircase, and finds Geoff, hands smeared in dry ink that even a good spit-rubbing will not remove, with the shutters closed.   
  
“Finished already?” Wat sounds astonished. He is also, Geoffrey is interested to note, clutching a pie.  
  
“Not by half,” Geoff merrily informs him, removing the pie from Wat’s hands and placing it on the small, low table near the bed. Wat makes a loud, objecting sound at the loss, until Chaucer yanks his shirt over his head and then starts on the lacings of Wat’s tunic. “Have I ever told you,” Geoff is saying, and it’s clear from Wat’s expression that he’s paying much better attention than he does to most other things out of the writer’s mouth, “how fetching you look in green?”  
  
His tone is teasing, and Wat’s first reaction is to box him in the head again. But something in Geoff’s face is expectant, so, instead, he answers with a simple, honest, confused, “No.”  
  
Geoff sighs, thoroughly disgusted by his own oversight, and tugs Wat closer. His long fingers smooth somewhere near the dip of spine at Wat’s lower back, smearing fingerprints of nearly-dried ink onto the pale strip of skin there. “You look,” he says, his voice absolute, “as though someone has lit the fields of Scotland ablaze. You look,” he says, “like a red-storm sunset over the Indian Ocean.” Wat is watching him, something warring for dominance on his face by rendering his expression entirely blank. “An explosion of poppies in a forest of English pine,” Geoff clarifies, and forcibly ends the line of thought by removing Wat of his tunic before pressing them together. And then Geoff kisses him.  
  
“I’ve never been to Scotland,” Wat manages hoarsely, after a moment.  
  
Geoff’s grin is dazzling. “You have. You simply weren’t born yet.”  
  
Wat interprets this as a questioning of his rich Britannic blood, and shoves Chaucer flat on his back onto the bed.  
  
Geoff smiles up at him, and forgets to ask about the pie.   
  


* * *

  
  
He knows the exact moment Wat awakes from his graceful slumber, because he there is a good dose of squirming and some liberally applied curses, most of which Geoff is fairly sure Wat’s made up just for the particular occasion.   
  
“Don’t move,” he idly commands, one long fingered hand landing in the middle of the man’s back and pressing down hard. “I’m writing.”  
  
“I don’t care,” Wat growls, “if you’re transcribing the ruddy  _Bible_ , get  _off_  me.” At the word ‘off,’ he surges upward again, and Geoff is obliged to use a knee at the backs of his naked thighs to keep him on the bed.  
  
“Stay still,” Geoff commands, leaning forward for something that gets nudged into Wat’s field of vision – the pie tin and the pie in it, totally eviscerated. “And do have some breakfast while you wait.”  
  
Wat is too stunned to react, Geoff is pleased to see, and dips the felted tip of the quill back into the pie. The smell of blueberries and peaches hits the air, and Geoff can practically  _hear_  Wat salivate. He doesn’t bother to ask who Wat could’ve known that would have brought them fresh fruit so out of season, because he knows Wat would have realized that he really had rather destroyed the pie. And Geoff can’t afford the distraction of a fight right now.  
  
He can see, though, that Wat is distracted by the markings on his back. The letters are large in some places, small in others – Geoff has fit an entire sonnet onto Wat’s left shoulder blade, scattered freckles like overzealous punctuation throughout. The small of his back holds only a few words, and his sides run with spare sentences. But Geoff knows, as Wat tips himself up just to his elbows, his canvas slipping and smoothing as he drags the felt in a large loop swirl at the widest point of Wat’s torso, that Wat will know the four glyphs he is now painting onto the man’s back.   
  
Indeed, Wat seems to slow his feeding, just marginally, his cheek dusted with pastry, and Chaucer uses the feather to wipe the crumbs away.   
  
“What’re you doing?” he asks with his mouth full, slow and suspicious, and Chaucer almost abandons his parchment to kiss him.   
  
Almost.  
  
“Transcribing your letter,” Geoff tells him, adding another looping swirl before dipping his quill into the pie again. The felt comes up dark and wet, and Wat’s eyes track its retreat over his shoulder. Later, Geoff plans to lick it off his fingers until Wat yells plans to move on with it, please, for the love of God. But now is for writing.  
  
The sharp underpoint of another letter unwinds itself just right of Wat’s spine.   
  
“I still won’t be able to read it,” Wat points out.  
  
“You’ll learn,” Chaucer assures him, adding the last letter and then sticking the quill, flag-like, into a hunk of remaining crust. “You know at least one word of it.”  
  
Geoff can tell by the way Wat’s eyes go half-mast and to the quill that he’s right. “Or I can teach you the letters again. Practice makes perfect.” He shifts the knee off of Wat’s legs to slide between and he watches as the muscles tense under his scrutiny – Wat making sure everything still works after having been trapped under twelve stone of writer for Lord knows how long.   
  
“I suppose you’d better,” Wat mutters into the soft mattress, fingers poking at the pie. A dollop of juice squirms its way to the top of the crust, the puddle such a dark purple it looks nearly black. “If it’ll shut you up.”  
  
It does. Geoff bends forward, both hands steady on the bed, his shoulder blades sharp points as he bends over Wat’s back and studies his own work. His last word has barely dried, but he starts on the first letter anyhow, his tongue tracing the first loop of the ‘L’ pointedly. Wat’s skin shivers just the littlest bit, and they spend the rest of the morning practicing the alphabet.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a gratuitous kid-fic moment in the same timeline.

There isn't much that can make Chaucer feel old. But by the time Roland's boy is four, and William's got three girls jousting riding the dogs and poking one another with broomsticks, Chaucer isn't sure how he feels about this whole benevolent Uncle role he's been forced into.  
  
He goes for tutoring every Monday, Wednesday and Friday during the fall, pressed under one wall of windows in the empty ballroom, writing tablets and chalk scattered across the floor. The girls loll on their stomachs to work, and tease Edmund for his severe posture, and the way he stays pressed against Chaucer's knee while the writer attempts his trade at a wooden desk.  
  
Ostensibly, he favors the boy over the others. In reality, he loves them as though they were his own, with the blessed relief that at the end of the afternoon, they return to their respective parents for feeding and cleaning and squalling. When they are with him, they are silent – or nearly so – and bearable, if not enjoyable. But it is clear that Edmund adores him, as he adores Edmund, and he makes sure to maintain the worship with liberally applied touslings of hair and slipped bits of parchment with doodles on them.  
  
He's unaware if Roland has any future plans for the boy, but it's Christiana who's asked him to raise him as a scribe's apprentice. She's got a good head on her, and keeps quiet, and Geoff has learned to watch her more warily than the rest. Springing all sorts of ideas when he's least expected them has led to a sort of wary truce between them, and more than enough scheming together for the good of the village has made Geoffrey wonder why they didn't tap Christiana as a resource earlier.  
  
Wat maintains that it's because she's a Proper Lady, and try as he might, Geoff has never been able to shake the man of that idea.   
  
Early September, and the apple orchard is just starting to fill with the promise of pie and butter and sauce and juice and wine and gravy and bread and every other sort of possible thing Wat will be able to scheme up with the bushels of fruit they will have dropped off to them by well-meaning travelers. Wat may stock the tavern with plenty of foods himself, but one thing they have never had to order is fruit.  
  
Geoff tries not to ask where it comes from, mostly, and, mostly, he fails.  
  
It's another fine Wednesday morning, and there's tea to be had as Geoffrey waits for the girls to arrive. Edmund is already there, as he always is, early in a place that is not even his own home – though it might as well be, as often as he's here – to see Geoff before lessons begin. The writer is staring out the large, narrow windows at the rising sun on the lake, and sipping tea from a mug that tastes far too much like clay and not at all enough like Darjeeling. Wat is trekking across the rolling green from the village toward the castle, and he finds himself smiling. A year ago, perhaps, he would have known from the shock of hair, or the inordinately large dead goose slung over one shoulder. Now he knows by the posture, the steady lope of determined footsteps, the hint of grimace in the shoulders.   
  
Distracted, Geoff doesn't notice as the boy insinuates himself under Geoff's arm, and, for a moment, he's startled. He looks down, the mug dangling from his fingers, before he sets it on the window seat. Edmund barely comes to his thigh, but he has a frown painted on that indicates the weight of the world. Chaucer crouches in front of him, worried, limbs folding in on themselves, and dusts a long-fingered hand through the boy's neat, dark hair.   
  
"What's this, then?" he asks, leaning back to examine. He puts one hand on each shoulder and pushes Edmund away so he can take catalogue at arm's length. "Has Bethany been at you again with the shields?"  
  
Edmund shakes his head fiercely; no, he knows now to run when Bethany hides behind the suits of armor in the entrance hall.   
  
"What is it?" Geoff asks, beginning to become truly alarmed. Edmund is not a child of fancy, and if there is something amiss, Geoffrey would have it put right immediately.  
  
"Don't go," is all the boy says, and then Geoff is startled to find he has two tiny arms wrapped around him, and a face pressed into his chest, and two rather strong fists wrapped into his shirt.  
  
Geoffrey blinks, and looks over the boys head to the doorway, where Wat is watching them both, and frowning at him.  
  
"What?" Geoffrey demands, and Wat's scowl deepens.  
  
With a sigh, Geoff manages to extract himself from Edmund's grasp, and he's relieved to find that the boy isn't crying. Settling him back at arm's length again, he sits down fully, and tips his elbows onto his knees. "What's this about my leaving, now?"   
  
"You just got back. You oughtn't go again," Edmund declares petulantly, into his own chest.  
  
Geoff frowns. He's been back for three weeks, and before that, gone for two, and back for two, and before that…he can't quite remember. It's been a patchy summer, but he knows that Jocelyn is maintaining his lessons, and making sure that the children read. He knows because when they come back, they are exactly as they ought to be, and he appreciates the effort. Though part of him expects it isn't as though the Lady has anything else to do. "There's still enough good weather for one last trip," he says, trying to be reasonable, but Edmund won't have it. Geoff looks up beseechingly at Wat, who is already crossing the room to them, and from his expression Geoff knows he won't find the help he's looking for.   
  
"Don't go," Edmund declares again, his arms crossing over his chest, in an absolutely failed menacing posture. "It'll get cold and I'll – we'll miss you and you should stay for the harvest and watch the leaves change."   
  
"I always watch the leaves change," he says, mostly to Wat, who is sitting down in his chair at the desk and putting his hands on Geoffrey's shoulders, leaning forward over both of them to listen in. Geoff's attention goes back to Edmund. "I do. No matter where I am."  
  
"It isn't the same," Edmund grumbles.  
  
"It isn't," Wat supplies quietly, one hand drifting over Geoff's neck. It sends something autumnal down his spine, a gust of crisp August wind and chattering dry leaves.   
  
Geoffrey pulls one knee to his chin and hugs it with long, wrapped arms, and sighs. "I'll stay another week," he declares, and cut's off Edmund's protestations by raising his voice. "And I'll return a week early." The boy quiets, looking rather shocked that the argument has worked at all, but the grateful squeeze at the back of his nape is what makes the sacrifice worth it. "I'll be back before the leaves turn brown."  
  
"Promise," Edmund demands, still of the age when such a thing is a contract of gold and silver.  
  
"Promise," Chaucer replies, and extends his overlarge hand to the boy, who takes it. They shake, and Edmund scrambles to his feet, overjoyed. "Now go find those girls and get them here for there lessons," Chaucer adopts a sterner tone. Edmund goes for the door, heedless of Chaucer's parting, "And don't let your hair get pulled!"   
  
There is a silence that only Wat can fill, after, and Geoff finds himself leaning his head against the man's knee. The petting travels up to his head, to his hair, and Geoff sighs. "Old man," Wat accuses affectionately. "Next you'll be wanting a wee one of your own."  
  
"Absolutely not," Geoff mutters into his pants, and sneaks up a halfhearted hand to smack at him.  
  
Wat catches it before it impacts anywhere, taps Geoff sharply in the back of the head, and causes a muffled "Ow, damnit," to escape in the region of his legs.   
  
Chaucer raises his head and looks at him – really looks at him, searching blue eyes and a curiously set mouth. "Do you want me to stay?" It isn't looking for a reason to remain – Geoff would stay if he wanted to, regardless of welcome or not – but he does want to know how Wat feels about the whole thing, since he's the one who has to put up with it the most.  
  
"Course I do," Wat answers automatically, and then scowls at himself. "I like you around's what I mean," he clarifies, not without a bit of awkward hesitation, and looks like he has something else to say. Geoff pulls his captured hand free and lets it curl into the hem of Wat's shirt, tacit encouragement, and the man leans forward onto his thighs and goes on: "But I don't mind you goin'." Geoff knows what he means.  
  
"I'll come back early," he swears, quietly, and this time it's a real promise, to someone who will hold him to it if his fails. "And then you're all mine, until the spring."  
  
Wat snorts at him, not at the promise but at the declaration of propriety. But he tugs Chaucer's head off of his knee, and the fit together, Geoff between his legs, for just long enough for Geoff's hand to smooth up to his cheek. They kiss, briefly, and Geoffrey has the urge to dismiss lessons for the day. Lord knows where the girls had gotten off to.  
  
He thinks, as he kisses Wat again, that some time soon, the winter isn't going to be enough. Somewhere, somehow, the urge to quest became the urge for time, and it isn't mortality that he feels slipping away, but life. Life with his family, and his friends, and the children that aren't his. Wat ravels his hands into Geoff's hair and eases him back, kisses his forehead, and the stamp of tiny feet on stone makes them both stand.   
  
Before Wat can head for the exit, and before the children can pound into the ballroom, Geoff snags him by the waist and delivers a sound, proper kiss that startles Wat, but only for the briefest moment, before he's kissing back. Wat pulls away again, swats him in the side, and calls him an idiot before he leaves.  
  
The children arrive, and Chaucer begins the day's lessons, sharing a secret look with Edmund, who is positively beaming, much to the disgust of the girls. He will go, and he will return early, and he will continue to travel.  
  
But some day soon, he knows, he'll stay for good.  
  



	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Geoff invents Valentine's Day. Just go with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poem is actually one of Chaucer's. Story idea taken from [here](http://community.livejournal.com/puzzlebleuink/4458.html#cutid1), wherein Aziraphale explains to Crowley that Geoffrey Chaucer invented Valentine's Day.

They're halfway through the winter and Geoff is getting desperate.  
  
It's too early by far to start planning out his next wander. The snow is nowhere near ready to stop falling yet, and even if it was, the bitter cold is enough to drive even his wandering feet indoors. But Christmas was a long time ago, and harvest even longer than that, and there are two things that he wants that he can't get. The first is a desire for new material, not only for himself but to stop telling the same old sorry stories to the people who visit the Phoenix Nest, both the regulars and the wanderers.   
  
The second is a desire to do something completely, totally, disgustingly, embarrassingly romantic to Wat. Not for him. To him. His own choice of words, really, because he seems to see the quest Geoff has as some sort of disease that has been inflicted upon him by proxy.   
  
Nevertheless, it's an important quest to Geoff, and it's been  _ages_  since he's been able to do something for Wat, and it isn't as though he can even attempt to up himself from that. Herding Wat's family to stay for Christmas and the New Year at the castle was difficult enough. Besides, that was for Wat – he wants something for the two of them, something quiet (inasmuch as they can be), something peaceful.  
  
He's turning into an old man, he thinks, and scratches with the nib of his pen at his fingernail, trying to dislodge some dried ink.   
  
Wat bustles down the stairs, looking a little haggard from a full day of  _not_  hitting his customers when they anger him, and starts pulling shutters closed and lays the plank over the door. Geoff sits quietly by the fire, and abandons his quill after a moment to bank it properly. They do this now – move in tandem, wordlessly, and whenever Geoff actually tries to think about it, his heart tripstops and then remembers how to walk again.  
  
The tavern secured, Wat brushes by him, just barely a hand on his shoulder, questioning. Geoff looks up, and smiles. "I'll be along," he says, and takes Wat's hand and kisses his fingers.  
  
"You're plotting something," Wat says, canny and unswayed by Geoff's usually convincing mouth.  
  
"Just a  _little_  something," Geoff wheedles, and Wat looks sufficiently suspicious that the writer hasn't even tried to deny it. "Go on," Geoff says, and kisses the fingers once more before he lets them go. Wat gives him another squint and then heads for the stairs. "And keep your feet warm, for once," Geoff calls over his shoulder. Wat's less than polite reply is lost as he ascends the stairs.   
  
Geoff sits for another moment, staring into the fire, and then throws down his quill, disgusted with himself, and follows Wat to bed.  


 

 

* * *

  
  
In the morning, the feeling is still there.   
  
He stands, shirtless, at the window that overlooks the road, right above the door to the tavern, and Wat, as usual, tells him to get away before he scares off the customers. It's too early for them to worry about that anyhow, so Geoff ignores him, and leans on his hands to stare out the window.   
  
"For saint's sake," Wat says, and swears under his breath, ducking next to Geoff's arm to try to force it closed. "It's freezing out there. And now it's freezing in here. You'll catch your death."   
  
"Some day," Geoff says, and tugs Wat away from the window against his chest, stealing body heat. "Not today."  
  
Wat grumps and wraps himself sideways against Geoff, head on his shoulder, and they look out the window together. His hands are scalding hot on the small of Geoff's back.   
  
"Birds," Geoff says after a moment.  
  
"What?" Wat says, like he clearly knows Geoff has gone around the bend for good.  
  
"Look at the birds," Geoff murmurs into Wat's hair, and Wat turns his head back out again.   
  
"So?" he grunts after a moment. "That's what they always do."   
  
"Really?" Geoff asks, a little distracted. There are brown birds, maybe sparrows, he can't quite tell, hopping too and fro in the bare branches of a tree. All the songbirds have flown away for the winter, but these ones always tend to stay, and Geoff always wondered how they decided.  
  
"Course," Wat says, and this time there is no doubt how daft he thinks Geoff is being. "Every February. About halfway through, the birds pick their mates. And then they nest."  
  
"Huh," Geoff says.   
  
"You're plotting again," Wat says, wrestling back out of his arms and closing the shutters firmly.   
  
"Huh," Geoff says again, but this time it's more to himself. He snaps out of it and goes to wrestle on a shirt, his brain whirling, and he snatches up the quills and parchment and inks he left by the fire last night and retreats into their bedroom all day, ignoring the noise from downstairs and Wat's suspicious frown as he comes to bed that night.  


 

 

* * *

  
  
The morning of the fourteenth, Geoff rises early.  
  
This is not unusual enough to disrupt Wat's sleep, though Geoff does make sure to give him a careful kiss on the temple before he leaves the bed, and tucks the blankets carefully around him, trying to trap the heat he left in the mattress against Wat's frame. Anything that will keep the man sleeping longer, and buy him more time.   
  
He slips downstairs to brew strong coffee – tea is for nights, mostly, but certainly not tonight – and hides all the eggs in the flour bin. And, for good measure, the honey as well, and slips it all out the door under his coat.  
  
He's back just as Wat's rising, and he can hear the man moving around upstairs, dressing, and it makes Geoff smile. He busies himself at the end of the bar, out of the way enough to leave Wat ease of movement, and scratches away at the poem that's been giving him difficulty since yesterday.  
  
It doesn't take more than ten minute for Wat to realize they're out of eggs. Geoff's grateful it wasn't the honey he noticed first, or there'd undoubtedly have been yelling.   
  
"Going to go get eggs," he tells Geoff. "Watch the place."   
  
It isn't a question, it's a command, and Geoff obediently sets down his quill. A few months ago, before the harvest, before Christmas, even, Wat would have just sent him for the eggs.   
  
He watches Wat pull on a coat, not nearly heavy enough for the snow that's just started to come down in vague flurries, and Geoff finds the inspiration for the rest of his poem as the door closes. He risks a good shouting at by scribbling it down, and scratching at it until he's got it just right, and then copies it neatly onto a fresh page, and cleans himself up.  
  
And then he gets to work on the tavern.  
  
It takes about a half an hour, and by that time he knows his plan has worked – Roland's job was to curtail Wat over breakfast, though he wasn't sure how the man would be able to. Kate shows up wrapped in high furs, slipping in the door like a thief, and she helps him, with the rest of it, and by the time the two of them are done, the place has exploded into red and pink and white, scrap-cloth streamers and tablecloths and candles everywhere, bits of paper scattered into neat little piles, and, most importantly, hearts. Hearts everywhere.   
  
"He's going to hurt you when he sees this," Kate says, matter of factly, her hands on her hips.   
  
"Probably," Geoff says merrily.   
  
Kate gives him a fond look, and he huffs a laugh, shrugging a little, and she pats his arm like she understands. It's worth it, is what he's trying to say. It's worth it, to see Wat fall silent for that split second before the rage takes over. And then after that is gone, after the hitting and the incoherent yelling, there will be the burrowing and the gratitude.  
  
Or so Geoff hopes. He tries not to fret too horribly.  
  
Jocelyn and Christiana are the next to arrive, and by that point there are a few patrons in the pub, and Kate helps him tend to them. The girls are helping to carry an enormous basket, one from the castle, and Geoff is relieved at the size of it.   
  
"It was enough?" he asks, as he greets them at the door to relieve their burdens.   
  
"More than enough," Christiana says, laughing, as Jocelyn pushes her hood back and shakes snow out of her hair.   
  
"William's bringing another this size," Jocelyn tells him as he sets the basket on the end of the bar, and curious customers peer at it.   
  
"You're joking," Geoff accuses, as he helps the very pregnant Christiana out of her robes and over to the fire. Two men make room for her without so much as a glance of suggestion from Geoff.   
  
"Well," Jocelyn hedges, as she starts to unpack the basket. "I may've had the cooks supplement what you brought to us."  
  
Geoff blinks at her for a moment, and then catches her around the neck with one arm and swoops to give her a large kiss on the cheek. She squeaks. "My favorite girls," he says, to the three of them, and lets her go to help unpack as well.   
  
Kate rolls her eyes, and tosses a towel over one shoulder, and returns to the chopping for the lunchtime stew. Jocelyn explains how Will went on to the tailor's to help Roland delay Wat, so Geoff has to burn his nervous energy by flitting about the pub, which is slowly filling with its usual crowd.   
  
The massive amount of honey cakes that the girls have brought down from the castle are certainly helping some of their more transient guests linger about, and Geoff finally gives up the waiting and settles down next to Christiana, to hold her yarn while she knits, and starts in on a new story for the gathered crowds, one about Aphrodite and her son, Eros, and their antics on Mount Olympus.   
  
It transitions from that to the story of Saint Valentine, which has blood in it, at least, and catches the attention of so many people that he has to start it over twice while more people gather closer.   
  
He doesn't even realize William and Wat have arrived until he's done with the tale, and Will has his hands braced on both of Wat's arms so that the man won't fly off and attack him. Geoff raises his eyebrows, alarmed, and extricates himself neatly from the fireplace to go receive his beating.  
  
The crowd doesn't seem to notice, which is good, and Christiana takes over the storytelling – she's going to make a wonderful mother, and Roland, who's just letting himself in the door, goes rosy cheeked as soon as he sees her. The spot next to her has remained respectfully empty, and he goes to fill it. Geoff turns his attention back to the violent issue at hand, and William finally lets him go.  
  
Wat immediately slugs him in the arm.  
  
"Ow!" Geoff protests, clutching his arm.   
  
"It's all  _pink_!" Wat bellows, and slugs him in the other arm.  
  
"Ow!" Geoff says again, leaning against the end of the bar, and grabs Wat's wrist as he goes to land another blow. "Would you  _stop_ that. There's red and white as well. Colors of roses."  
  
Wat squints up at him. "What the hell do we want roses for?"  
  
"They're for love," Geoff says, exasperated. "And before you ask, I left the yellow ones out, because those are for infidelity which," he hastens, and jabs Wat in the chest, "is not the point of today."  
  
"The point – " Wat sputters, and leans back to slug him again.   
  
William, who had reached down to pick up the basket he'd dropped in an effort to restrain the man, slips a honey cake into Geoff's hand, and Geoff pops it into Wat's mouth before he can wind back properly.   
  
"Mmf!" Wat says.  
  
"The point," Geoff reiterates.   
  
Wat gives him a scowl, but his anger has drained out of him at the presence of the combination of two of his favorite foods – baked goods and honey.   
  
"Why?" Wat grumbles, licking crumbs off his fingers, and something blossoms in his chest, something he's been waiting for. The feeling of a plan coming together.  
  
"For you," he says quietly, and steals a kiss so quick even Wat doesn't have the time to give him a thrashing for the public affection. Geoff slips off behind the bar to help Kate with the customers, but when he looks over his shoulder, Wat is still watching him, slightly tinted red across the cheeks, and is holding his fingers to his mouth.   


 

 

* * *

  
  
By the time the sun has started to go down, the crowd in the pub is so large that Geoff has ended up sitting on the bar itself, on a spot that's been mildly cleaned off, to tell his myths again. Even some of the people who had heard them earlier have stayed to hear them again, and the stew is gone, and the honey cakes are gone, and even Edward, unexpectedly, has stopped by. Not that anyone else would notice him, not under the cloak and shed of his royal rings, but William has been in the corner with him for some time, and when William leaves, it's Jocelyn who's at his side, and the man seems genuinely glad of the company.  
  
The party, for that is what it has become, goes long into the night. Wat ends up renting all of his rooms, to the point that some of his paying patrons must even be housed at the castle, which Will says will be no problem. Others, unable to afford beds, will undoubtedly sneak into the stables, but it's a bitter enough night that Geoff knows Will won't have the heart to turn them away.  
  
Christiana is the first one to break their gathering, ever the responsible mother-to-be, and Roland helps her bundle up properly and slip out. After that, the magic of the night seems to have broken slightly, and more and more people retire in clusters. Will and Jocelyn are the next to go, and though Edward lingers for a bit to speak with Geoff, and promises to pass on his words of goodwill to Germaine, Geoff knows he'll be slipping up to the castle as well.   
  
Soon, it's only Kate and Wat left, working in almost-silence together to clean the bar. Geoff checks his pocket surreptitiously to make sure that the parchment he folded and tucked there earlier remains in place, and he has a moment of panic every time he reaches and isn't sure it's there.  
  
But it is. It remains secure, and soon, Kate is smiling wearily up at him, and accepting his kisses on both her cheeks, and despite her insistence, Geoff walks her up the path to the smithy's.   
  
At the door, he hesitates, his shoulders hunched against the cold, and she notices, and pauses, not quite closing the door against the wind.   
  
"I'm sorry," he says. "That you have to be alone tonight."  
  
She gives him a small smile, the sort he's gotten used to, and squints up at him. "Now why on earth would you think that I'll be alone tonight?" she asks.   
  
Her smile grows as he laughs, shocked, and kisses her again. She swats him on the arm. "Go on," she says. "He's waiting."   
  
That sombers him up significantly, and he hurries back down the path, the warm glow of lit candles from Kate's windows not doing much to illuminate his way. It takes a few minutes to get back to the Phoenix Nest, and a little longer after that to let himself in. Wat isn't downstairs, and the fire is banked, clear invitation to come to bed, and the small flicker of candle from the stairwell is enough to make Geoff's heart thud in relief. He secures the door, and treads quietly, not wanting to wake their lodgers.   
  
Wat's waiting on the edge of the bed. The candlelight catches his hair and makes it burn red-gold, better than the dull red paper scraps downstairs, and Geoff seals the precious sight into the room as he closes the door behind him.   
  
He's barely inside before Wat's expression is flickering, trying to decide what it wants to do when faced with the actuality of the man who came dangerously close to humiliating Wat today. But he didn't, actually – he could've, not that Wat knows that yet – but he didn't. Geoff crosses the room and dumps himself in a messy sprawl at Wat's feet, his arms in the man's lap, and Wat's hands immediately go to his hair.   
  
"'s cold out there," Wat remarks, threading his fingers over and over Geoff's scalp like he can pull the cold out by hand.   
  
"Mm," Geoff says, and reaches again for the parchment folded, and pulls it out and sets it on Wat's leg. "I wrote you something."  
  
Wat casts him a wary glance, and opens the parchment up to scowl down at the words he cannot read. "Always words." Wat hands the paper back to him. "I don't have any use for words, Geoff."   
  
Geoff tries to ignore the tiny sliver of something that sneaks into his gut at that, and his hand closes around the parchment.   
  
Wat struggles for a moment, jaw clenching, and then pulls his hands out of Geoff's hair and into his lap, hands closing around Geoff's, around the paper. "Just need you."   
  
The breath that Geoff lets out is half incredulous, but mostly relieved. "I'm going to read it to you anyway," he says, sweeping the unbelievable adoration out of his eyes before Wat looks up to meet them. He doesn't give the man a chance to protest before he reads the carefully scripted poem on the middle of the page.  


 

_Do not sing for a bird or a flower,_  
_Nor for snow nor for ice,_  
 _Nor even for cold or warmth,_  
 _Nor for the return of the green to the meadows;_  
 _Nor for any other pleasure_  
 _Do I sing, nor have I ever sung,_  
 _But for my lord for whom I long,_  
 _For he is the fairest in the world._

  
  
He feels Wat's fingers clench around his wrists, and neither of them speak for a moment.   
  
"You'll have to change the end," Wat says, his voice a little tight. He clears his throat. "Besides which, I'm not your lord. That's William."   
  
Geoff laughs, pleased, and lets the paper fall to the ground next to them, forgotten, useless now that the words are in Wat, where they're meant to stay. "I know some very convincing arguments to encourage you otherwise," he says, and pulls Wat down into a kiss.   
  
Wat pulls him up onto the bed, and the soft embrace starts to flicker, Wat's hands on his thighs, Wat's mouth on his throat, Wat's hips against his, and oh, yes, Wat is very much his lord, and always will be. And, though Wat distracts him most thoroughly for the rest of the night, and well into the morning, Geoff knows that it won't take much time before he's planning for next year. Because a day of its own to tell the man he loves how much he worships him is one that will take far, far more planning than even a year can provide.  
  
Or a lifetime. 


End file.
